Navigate:

John Kerry: The un-Hillary Clinton

Kerry seems more interested in the here-and-now in world affairs than did Clinton. | AP Photos

Some White House officials wanted Kerry to follow in Clinton’s footsteps by making his maiden overseas trip a tour of Asia, according to two people close to the situation. Instead, Kerry insisted on a 10-day trip that starts in London, with stops in Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

“That raised a few eyebrows,” says one State Department adviser about Kerry’s decision on the itinerary.

Text Size

-

+

reset

While he publicly supports Obama’s long-standing policy of reorienting the country’s foreign and national security strategy toward China and Asia, he’s privately less enthusiastic about the pivot than Clinton, who made it a core aspect of a philosophy focused on the long game. At the start, he seems more interested in the here and now, hoping to intercede directly on contemporary crises in Syria and Iran, and helping to broker a new trade pact with Europe, one of the few big-ticket foreign policy items Obama referenced during his State of the Union earlier this month.

Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland shrugged off the issue at a recent briefing, saying Kerry would have added Asia stops to his itinerary but didn’t want to make “an already long excursion… even longer.”

Early in the administration, Clinton decided it simply wasn’t worth her time to push for a new Israel-Palestinian peace agreement in the face of a hawkish Israeli regime, an implacably violent Hamas in Gaza and corrupt Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The emergence of a powerful centrist bloc in the recent Israeli election might change all that, and Kerry was one of the advisers pushing Obama to schedule first trip to the Jewish State next month, according to a person familiar with the situation.

“He may well focus more intensely on the Middle East peace process and the negotiations that go into that,” says Nina Hachigian, a senior foreign policy fellow at the progressive Center for American Progress who served on the National Security Council in the 1990s.

Much has been made of Clinton’s warm personal relationship with Obama, which steadily improved over the years. Yet despite all the encomiums on her departure after four years — capped by an affectionate dual “60 Minutes” sit-down last month — Clinton worked for a president who demands an unusual amount of direct control over foreign policy.

This wasn’t personal, as it turned out — just Obama’s hands-on-the-wheel management style.